A Candidate's Spouse Attacks Bush's Environmental Policy

By MICHAEL BRICK

Published: May 9, 2004

Teresa Heinz Kerry reproached President Bush on environmental issues in a speech yesterday to several dozen followers of the Rev. Al Sharpton at a ballroom in Manhattan.

Mrs. Heinz Kerry, the wife of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, used voter registration as a jumping-off point to discuss the environment, education, children's health and Social Security.

She called the administration's efforts to alter the clean air and water acts "inexcusable and unforgivable."

"It's a sin against humankind, period," she said.

She also outlined specific policy ideas, including her husband's plan to have the government pay for a four-year college education in exchange for two years of community service right after high school.

"At 18, most of us don't know who the heck we are," she said, suggesting that two years of community service might help teenagers find direction.

Mrs. Heinz Kerry's appearance, on the same day that her husband spoke at a historically black college in New Orleans, came a week after influential black and Hispanic political leaders complained that Mr. Kerry's organization lacked diversity and was failing to appeal directly to minority voters.

She did not address those criticisms, but her host did. Mr. Sharpton told the audience, largely members of his National Action Network, that the Kerry campaign was more diverse than the Clinton campaign had been at a similar stage of the campaign in 1992. He also defended Mrs. Heinz Kerry from criticism that she was too willful for a candidate's wife.

"I believe America is ready for a first lady that says what they mean and means what they say," said Mr. Sharpton, a onetime rival of Mr. Kerry's who has endorsed him without officially withdrawing from the race.

Mrs. Heinz Kerry, who spoke of "going to university" and pronounced 1997 as "nineteen-hundred and ninety-seven," also dismissed as "narrow and stupid" suggestions that ordinary Americans could not relate to a woman who was rich, foreign-born and multilingual.

Putting on her glasses to read statistics, she addressed the arcana of pension fund calculation, individual retirement accounts, asthma and lead poisoning. Combining the parlance of late-night television talk shows with the deferential tones of a more traditional candidate's wife, Mrs. Heinz Kerry asked her audience to vote for Mr. Kerry.

"I'd like to put in a plug for my husband," she said, "not because he's a Democrat or because he's John Kerry but because he's a good person."